Academic Partners

The German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford, the Electricity Research Centre at UCD and VTT are the academic organisations in the RealValue consortium. Read more about the team members and their roles below.

Nils May

Research Associate

DIW

Nils is a research associate in DIW’s Climate Policy department, focusing on the transformation towards a carbon-neutral energy future. Nils is analysing the financing and integration of renewable energy alongside optimal policy design. Previously, Nils studied in Norway, USA, Germany and China and worked for the IT-company SAP.

Karsten Neuhoff

Head of the Department Climate Policy

DIW

Karsten is the leader of DIW Berlin’s RealValue team. He is head of the Department Climate Policy at DIW Berlin and Professor for Energy and Climate Policy at the Technical University Berlin. He has published 42 journal articles and 4 books on the topic of Power Market design, Technology Policy in the context of materials sector and renewables technologies, Emission Trading and International Climate Policy. Karsten is leading research and advice projects for the EU Commission and governments for several EU member states. He holds a diploma in Physics from the University of Heidelberg, an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics, and a PhD in Economics from the University of Cambridge.

Nolan Ritter

Research Associate

DIW

Since April 2015, Dr. Nolan Ritter is a research associate at the climate policy department at the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin. Currently, he works mainly for the EU-funded RealValue project that explores how to market the flexibility of residential electricity consumption using smart-electric thermal storage heaters. In particular, Nolan contributes by exploring potential business models. His research on energy has been published in international, peer-reviewed journals such as Land Economics, Transportation Research Part A, and Energy Economics.

Karlis Baltputnis

PhD Researcher

RTU

Karlis completed his Masters in Power and Electrical Engineering in 2015 and started his doctoral studies at RTU Institute of Power Engineering. His doctoral research is mainly focused on the optimisation of hydro-thermal scheduling. Karlis mostly contributes to WP3, in particular tasks related to modelling and simulation of power systems, unit commitment and dispatch, as well as the WP6 market analysis tasks.

Zane Broka

PhD Researcher

RTU

Zane has been a PhD Researcher at RTU Institute of Power Engineering since 2014, working on various power system optimisation problems. She holds a Master’s degree in Power Engineering from the same institution. Zane is also the Co-Chair of the Energy Terminology Sub-Commission at the Latvian Academy of Sciences. Within the RealValue Project, she is involved in modelling and simulation tasks, as well as market related analysis. She also plays an active role in the dissemination and exploitation activities.

Olegs Linkevics

Head of Development (Latvenergo AS) / Associate Professor (RTU)

RTU

Olegs is responsible for cooperation between RTU and Latvenergo AS concerning the Latvian trials of SETS. He is also a member of the RealValue Project Steering Committee. Having joined the company in 1995, now he is the Head of Development of Latvenergo AS. Olegs is also Associate Professor at RTU teaching the introductory course in Electrical and Heat Engineering. Olegs holds a doctoral degree in Power Engineering and a master’s degree in Heat Power Engineering from RTU. He is a member of different professional associations, including EURELECTRIC and VGB PowerTech.

Antans Sauhats

Professor and Director of the Institute of Power Engineering

RTU

Professor Sauhats leads the RealValue project team of RTU and oversees the various tasks carried out by RTU with a focus on modelling, deployment and demonstration activities in Latvia. Professor Sauhats holds a habilitated doctoral degree in Power Engineering from RTU. He is a corresponding member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, Chairman of the RTU Promotion Council for Power Engineering and Chief of Scientific and Education Committee of the Latvian Association of Power Engineers and Energy Constructors.

Diana Zalostiba

Leading Researcher and Associate Professor

RTU

She is supporting Professor Sauhats in management of the research and administrative activities within the project and coordination with other RealValue partners. Diana has over seven years’ research experience in modelling and simulation of power and energy systems and development of power system anti-emergency means. She holds a doctoral degree in Power Engineering from RTU and a bachelor’s degree in Management from University of Latvia. She is an expert of the Latvian Council of Science in Power Engineering.

Muhammad Bashar Anwar

PhD Student

UCD

As part of the RealValue project, Bashar is looking at the quantification of Energy Arbitrage and Reserve Provision value of the SETS devices through co-optimised Unit Commitment and Economic Dispatch models which take into account the thermal behaviour of buildings, end-user comfort constraints and technical characteristics of SETS devices. Subsequently, a robust comparison of the performance of SETS devices with respect to other competing technologies will be conducted for different countries and varying scenarios.

Mostafa Bakhtvar

Senior Power Systems Researcher

UCD

Dr Bakhtvar contributes to the technical outcomes of the RealValue project primarily as per Work Package WP3 - Task 3.4. He focuses on refining distribution network congestion management tools based on the characteristics of smart electric thermal storage (SETS) devices. His work, through extensive computer simulation, enables assessing the potential for realizing congestion management by employing aggregated response from small-scale SETS devices. Accordingly, various SETS deployment scenarios will be considered to analyse its benefits against alternative solutions, namely network reinforcement.

Giuseppina Buttitta

PhD Student

UCD

Giuseppina Buttitta joined the University College Dublin team, as a PhD student, in July 2015, after completing her MSc degree in energy and nuclear engineering. Giuseppina is working on Work-Package 3.2: “Develop Models of Domestic Thermal Energy End-Use”. She will contribute to the development of domestic thermal energy end-use models in multiple European countries, such as Ireland, UK and France. This model will be integrated with the model of the electric energy supply.

Donal Finn

Associate Professor

UCD

Donal has responsibility for the academic oversight of Domestic Thermal Energy End-Use analysis as outlined in WP 3.2. His current research interests lie in the analysis and optimisation of energy conversion systems used in building energy applications, with a particular interest in heat pumps and thermal energy storage systems. Dr. Finn has acted as an expert advisor/assessor to Enterprise Ireland, the European Commission FP5, FP6 and FP7 and Marie Curie programmes.

Ciara O’Dwyer

Senior Power Systems Researcher

UCD

Ciara is the RealValue WP3 leader and is responsible for coordinating the research activities in UCD and with the RealValue academic partners. The objective of WP3 is to extrapolate the Real Value physical demonstrations to a much broader future European energy system context, with much greater penetrations of SETS. Ciara has significant experience in power system modelling with research interests in demand response and energy storage.

Mark O’Malley

Professor of Electrical Engineering

UCD

Mark is the leader of the UCD RealValue team. He is the Director of the Electricity Research Centre and Director of the UCD Energy Institute, a multidisciplinary, multi institutional, industry supported research activity. He is recognized as a world authority on Energy Systems Integration and in particular Grid Integration of Renewable Energy. Mark has active research collaborations in Europe, the United States (US) and China, is co-founder of the International Institute for Energy Systems Integration, and coordinator of the European Energy Research Alliance Joint Programme in Energy Systems Integration.

Sarah Darby

Deputy Programme Leader

UOXF

Sarah Darby is deputy programme leader with the Lower Carbon Futures team at the Environmental Change Institute and her main research interests are in the everyday implications of smart grids. She will be leading on the Customer Impact Study of customer perceptions, preferences and actions in relation to storage heating in Ireland, Germany and Latvia; and contributing to the assessment of regulatory and policy requirements for demand response using thermal storage. Information on her work and publications is at http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/people/sdarby.html.

Julie Goodhew

Researcher

UOXF

Julie is an environmental psychologist with a multidisciplinary background in business studies and education. Her recent work has looked at the conservation benefits from using thermal imaging to make heat-loss visible to homeowners and has explored how householders understand heat in their homes. In the RealValue project, she will be working on customer engagement with Smart Electric Thermal Storage heating and data analysis.

Phil Grunewald

EPSRC Fellow

UOXF

Phil leads research on the timing and flexibility of electricity use in homes. For this he collects and analyses activity diaries of household members alongside their electricity load profile and heating patterns. His work helps to understand the importance of heating controls on the timing of demand.

Sarah Higginson

Researcher

UOXF

Sarah is interested in energy use practices, in particular the timing of domestic electricity demand. On the RealValue project, she will be working on customer engagement, and understanding and improving the customer experience, as well as commenting on the social assumptions in the models being used in the project. On Fridays, Sarah runs her own business so is not generally available.

Stefanie Reiss

Researcher

UOXF

Stefanie’s background is in Mechanical Engineering with a focus on energy and process technology. Her research is on evaluating the sustainability of technical options and she has completed an industrial doctorate on quantifying the sustainability of different materials. On the RealValue project, she will be working on customer engagement, data analysis and on verifying the models developed in the project.

Marina Topouzi

Researcher

UOXF

Marina is an interdisciplinary researcher with a strong background in building energy use and demand. Her main research interests concern the ‘building/user’ system, focussing on the factors that affect buildings’ energy performance. Within the RealValue project, she will be working on customer engagement, data analysis and understanding of the socio-economic and technical implications of Smart Electric Thermal Storage heating.

Göran Koreneff

Senior scientist

VTT

With the background of M.Sc. from Helsinki University of Technology in 1993, Göran has over 20 years of research experience in energy economics and energy markets at VTT. His main research interest at the moment is in electricity markets, smart grids, and end-user aspects. In RealValue he leads VTT’s activities and also takes an active part in, for example, market related issues and socio-economic, policy & regulatory analysis.

Juha Kiviluoma

Senior scientist

VTT

Juha has 12 years of research experience in the energy system integration of wind and solar power. He has co-authored over 50 publications.His main research interest is in modelling energy systems with qualifications in problem formulation, model formulation, programming, generation planning, unit commitment and dispatch, balancing, power system reserves, capacity adequacy, and energy resources. In RealValue his main interest is in the benefits of heat storages at the energy system level.

Ari Laitinen

Senior scientist

VTT

Ari has more than 29 years of experience in the research area of energy use of buildings and community systems. His expertise covers product development, modelling, simulation of the building energy use and HVAC-system components. His current and past international activities include several EU funded projects and IEA collaboration. Ari focuses on building related issues in the RealValue project.

Topi Rasku

Research Scientist

VTT

After graduating as a Master of Science from Aalto University in 2015, Topi joined VTT and started working on the modelling aspects of the RealValue project. His main focus is on the smart electric thermal storage and building thermal models used in the larger scale Nordic energy system simulations, but he assists in the overall energy system modelling whenever able. Topi’s main interest concerning the RealValue project is the role of demand-side management in future energy systems.

Lassi Similä

Research scientist

VTT

Lassi has worked at VTT since 2007. His main research interests are long-term future energy scenarios and development of energy technology, power market design and electricity markets. In RealValue his main interest is in market related issues and socio-economic, policy & regulatory analysis.